“It’s gone. I did try to save him, you know,” he added waspishly. “You should thank me.”
Vincent only glared at him distrustfully.
Enrique sighed. “When a vampire dies, he turns to dust. Your brother was already Vampire when he died. There’s nothing to bury.”
Vincent groaned again. Could this get any worse? What would happen to his brother’s soul? Would God understand that it had not been John’s choice to be made unholy?
“Come,” Enrique snapped again. “Sunrise is almost upon us.”
“Sunrise?” Vincent repeated numbly, feeling as though he was in a dream, a nightmare.
“Your first lesson, boy. You want to be dust like your brother? Then stay here and wait for the sun to rise. If you want to live, then come with me.”
Not bothering with whether Vincent followed him or not, Enrique walked back to the campfire and began adjusting the saddle on a brown horse that Vincent had never seen before. It was standing placidly next to his own black gelding, but John’s chestnut was nowhere to be seen.
“My brother’s horse,” he said distractedly, still having trouble thinking straight.
“The bandits took it. Yours ran, but I managed to round it up for you. I’m leaving now. You can follow or not.”
Vincent watched in a daze as Enrique mounted his horse and rode away into the night. He could hear the clopping of the animal’s hooves, the chiming of the buckles as clearly as if he stood only feet away. He thought about what the vampire had told him, that the clean light of the sun would burn him to dust if he lingered. And he tried to find the energy to care.
Did he want to die? Or did he want to live?
He stared at the campfire, like the one he’d so recently shared with his brother, John. How they’d laughed about the cattle drive and imagined their futures. A future the bandits had stolen from them. Enrique hadn’t done that. He’d made a choice for them that he had no right to make, but he hadn’t caused any of this. No, that blame belonged to the men who’d attacked them in the first place.
And in that moment, Vincent decided. He’d live long enough to avenge his brother’s death. At least that long. And then he’d decide what came after.
Mexico, present day
“And did you?” Lana asked somberly. “Did you ever find the men who attacked you?”
“They were already dead. Enrique had come upon them as they ran from our campsite and killed them all.”
“But he said—”
“Yeah. He said they stole John’s horse and let me assume they escaped. He wanted me alive for his own reasons, so he said whatever he thought would work.”
“He’s your boss?”
“In a manner of speaking. He’s the Lord of Mexico. Different thing altogether.”
“Do you like him?”
“Hate the fucker, to be honest. But he’s the guy in charge, so I try to get along.”
Lana let out a sharp laugh. “You don’t seem like a guy who gets along.”
Vincent turned and gave her a crooked grin which amped his already high levels of gorgeousness to somewhere in the stratosphere.
“Are you saying I’m not a team player, Lana?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “No, I’m saying you don’t strike me as the kind of guy who’ll kiss ass to climb the corporate ladder.”
Vincent’s grin disappeared and his face went hard, his eyes cold. “You don’t know much about vampires if you think I got where I am by kissing ass. I climbed the corporate ladder by killing anyone who stood in my way.”
“Hey,” Lana objected, pretending her blood hadn’t frozen in her veins when he looked at her like that. “I said you didn’t seem like the type, remember? Relax, tough guy.”
The tension in the cab ratcheted down a few turns, and she felt her blood begin to flow again.